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Sociolinguistics from the Periphery "presents a fascinating book about change: shifting political, economic and cultural conditions; ephemeral, sometimes even seasonal, multilingualism; and altered imaginaries for minority and indigenous languages and their users."

As stated in the introductory chapter, the aim of the present book is tofill in a gap between, on the one hand, books about language which donot deal with teacher education and books about language teacher educationwhich do not deal extensively with language.

After a period when language (as "grammar") occupied a central role inlanguage teacher education (LTE), we moved to communicative theories oflanguage teaching where the role of language was either downplayed orignored. Today, "language" is back in LTE especially in the form ofawareness about language and together with communicative proficiencyconstitute the important elements of functionally-oriented approaches toELT. From a more theoretical (Part 1) to the most practical (Part 2),the book emphasizes the importance of language awareness activitiesembracing both teacher and learner language and teaching material. Widely dealt in the literature topics like cultural awareness (Barnes), attitudes tolanguage varieties (Wright), register, genre and language of particularprofessions (Ferguson) co-exist in this volume with much less dealt topics like reflexive nature of language (Grundy) and error analysis (Wright).Part 1 Concepts of language in language teacher educationThe five chapters explore different ways in which language is involvedin language teacher education. Important elements that are stressed are:the notion of "languaging", the social dimension of language, its nature asa pedagogic subject, reflexivity of language learner and discourse typesthat ensure learning opportunities.

After providing a brief history of applied linguistics in the 20thcentury, Joseph suggests an "alternative perspective" as to what languagerepresents within the process of language teaching and learning. He explores the possibility of treating language as a verb instead of a noun, which willenable us to deal with speech and thought as a single function.Conceiving language as a verb, it means that we see it as dynamic rather than static, as an "action" rather than a "thing".Adhering to a communicative approach to language teaching means adoptingthe verbal conception of language; it means getting students to "do" things,to "perform" functions. The communicative approaches to language pedagogyhave shifted the emphasis from language as an institutional thing to languageas a verbal practice. Seeing the English language as an institution,however, is not an unproblematic concept since it is not a single universalinstitution. Joseph draws from his experience in Hong Kong to give examples of the variability of Hong Kong English. The English standards are declining inHong Kong, one might notice, however, not in a random way; people commiterrors influenced by their principle language. Hong Kong English as aninstitution differs from international Standard English; teachers andteacher trainers have to find the balance between the two whichpresupposes more or less intervening in the cultural process.The basic issue put forward in this chapter is that teaching a languagemeans constantly making decisions about whether to teach the language asinstitution or as practice.

Alan Davies: The social component of language teacher education.

Davis takes this verb-like and noun-like aspect of language a stepfurther and emphasizes the importance of the "social component" in language teacher education. Unlike physical growth which does not presuppose any kind of interaction, language development will not take place withoutinteraction with other language users. This means that students in language teacher education courses should not only learn the grammar (the rules) of thelanguage they plan to teach; they almost certainly need to know how andwhen to operate these rules. Davis puts down three elements of the socialcomponent of LTE: the complexity of speech communities, the varietywhich we need to teach and whether LTE should be linguistically prescriptive or not.Regarding the first issue, being a member of the speech community meanssharing common attitudes as to what is appropriate use of a language,what is standard language etc. Training teachers then means encouraging them to realize such complexities and appreciate heterogeneity.The second question, which English variety should we teach, is relatedto the previous one. The easy way out is to teach Standard English. Butthen, what is Standard English? What about the marxist, feminist etc critique of Standard English? What is the place of varieties, dialects and registers?LTE entails then a constant decision regarding these issues.Finally, as far as the description-prescription relationship isconcerned, students of LTE need to be made aware of the ongoing debate about norms which are conventional but cannot be dismissed and prescription. Rather than providing straight answers, LTE courses need to make students aware of the social component of their education.

H.G. Widdowson: Language teaching: defining the subject

In his chapter, Widdowson seems to be stating the obvious: teachersshould know their subjects: English, French, science etc. Although recognizing its practical utility, Widdowson however, wants to go beyond this superficial statement and work on the crucial distinction between object (language) and pedagogic subject. By possessing the knowledge of their language subject, he argues, language teachers acquire their authority and professionalism. Language as a subject differs from language as experienced by native speakers. This is the reason why being a native speaker of a language is not a necessary prerequisite for being a teacher and it may even be anobstacle for a native speaker to acquire the necessary knowledge and becomelanguage teacher. The subject, then, is not English, French or German, butEnglish as a foreign language, French as a foreign language. The knowledge that the native speaker does not necessarily possess but which is very importantfor the language teacher is "recognizing this foreignness and recognizinghow the language is foreign in different ways for different groups ofstudents" (p. 25).To illustrate this point, Widdowson gives an example of a newspaperarticle which contains abstruse words crucial to its interpretation but whichmay be incomprehensible for a reader who does not share the cultural values andattitudes of the writer. He concludes by stating the role of teacher education as follows "to guide teachers into an understanding of the principles that define their subject" (p. 80). Foreignness of language encompasses different ways and calls for different kinds of manipulation that prospective language teachers needto be made ware of to warrant their professional authority.

Peter Grundy: Reflexive language in language teacher education

Grundy takes Wissowson's point about teaching a language instead oflanguage further and stresses the importance of conscious awareness of thereflexive nature of language in language teaching methodology. By "reflexivelanguage" Grundy means "these diacritic features of language which instructaudiences how to interpret the speech they are hearing" (p. 85). He discussesexamples of data from second language classes which suggest that learners have more control over the reflexive than over the formal properties of language. This is contrary to what language teachers believe since the latter usually fail to recognize that second language learners do possess reflexive control over their own language. Drawing from his experience in Hong Kong Polytechnic University, he describes how inspiring it was for his students to use samples of learner talk from their own classrooms (in an introduction topragmatics course) to gain awareness of the importance of reflexivity intheir own teaching.Grundy's conclusion is that languages are learnable rather thanteachable and that if learners are exposed to talk rich in reflexive features, it is these features that enable them to acquire language since they make theimpute comprehensible to them.

Scott Thornbury: Training in instructional conversation

The author shares Widdowson's and Grundy's concerns with language thatlearners can learn from; what he is interested in is the type ofdiscourse which creates opportunities for learners. He values conversation-like talk where learners have the opportunity to develop a sense of control and, as a result of that, a sense of ownership of the discourse and a sense of being empowered.The institutional goals and the classroom context, including therelationship between the interactants and the way the discourse ismanaged, are parameters which are interrelated. In order to prove thisinterdependence, Thornbury relates these ideas to the approach adoptedon in-service Diploma courses at International House in Barcelona. Traineesare encouraged to gauge their learners' responses to instruction; this isbasically what training for "a pedagogy of possibility" is about.Thornbury argues for instructional conversation where the learners adoptthe role of controlling the discourse, of constructing meaning without atthe same time challenging the authority and expertise of their teacher.Part 2 Working with language in language teacher educationMoving on from theory to practice, part 2 is a collection of papers withthe emphasis on practice with language in LTE. Two main themes link thesepapers together and to the first part: 1) the importance of language awarenessinterpreted as the explicit knowledge about language and how it worksand 2) the role of language in the improvement of teachers' personal languageskills in the classroom.

Wright's opening chapter deals with issues having to do with the contentand teaching of language teaching. Following Widdowson, he states that beinga fluent mother-tongue speaker of English (and, in fact, of any language)does not guarantee successful practice as a language teacher. Neither being a good "linguist" (having successfully completed courses in syntax andsemantics) guarantees a successful language teaching practice. What aprospective teacher needs is to possess language awareness that enableshim/her to understand not only how language works but also how studentswork with language as well as the nature of their mistakes. Languageawareness is a goal and a method for LTE.Language awareness can operate within three domains in teacher education:the "user" domain, the "analyst" domain and the teacher domain. Theexample of a specific text is used to illustrate how newly acquired knowledgeabout language can be linked to classroom practice; specific activities aredescribed to show how the data can be exploited for language awarenesswork with trainees in all three domains. The chapter concludes by summarizinga number of principles for appropriate classroom practice.

Gibson Ferguson: Language awareness in the preparation of teachers ofEnglish for specific purposes

The issue of language awareness is taken further in Ferguson's chapterwhere it is applied to English for specific purposes (ESP) contexts. He arguesfor the adoption of a discourse perspective on language that will enableusers to understand the differences between the language used in law,business, medicine etc. as variation in discourse and genre rather than lexis andgrammar. In the final part of the chapter, the author describes one of thelanguage awareness activities employed on a short ESP teacher education coursewhich was used to introduce participants to the principles of genre analysisand to the idea of the role of communicative purposes in making particularlexico-grammatical choices.

This chapter aims at increasing teachers' professional development,awareness of their own and their students' language use andunderstanding of classroom dynamics. To chive this, Pennington uses classroom discourse data in the form of audio and video recordings and classroom observation in Hong Kong and Britain. She presents a scheme for the classification ofclassroom discourse into different communicative frames. In this way, apprenticeteachers are helped towards raising their awareness of classroomdynamics in relation to larger contexts. The frames identified are: lesson frame,lesson-support frame, institutional-support frame and, finally, commentaryframe. The latter is being influenced by popular culture and vernacularlanguage; this is where participants express their opinion and reactionsto classroom context and the world at large.

Clare O'Donoghue and Tom Hales: What was that you said? Traineegenerated language awareness

The authors start by describing several possible models for the languageawareness component of teacher education courses. Using self-generatedtranscript-data, they develop a series of grammar awareness activitiesfor teachers. What is really unusual is that students of pre-servicetraining courses are encouraged to examine authentic instances of language and consider themselves as researchers of language rather than consumers or transmitters of knowledge. Trainees work in groups to perform dialogueand concordance tasks, to apply their theoretical learning to authentic dataand investigate if grammatical descriptions and coursebook paradigms holdtrue.

Heather Murray: Developing language awareness and error detection. What can we expect of novice trainees?

This chapter reports on an investigation of teacher trainees' ability todetect and classify language learners' errors. The trainees wereattending a CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) course. The author points out that the importance of error detection has beenunderestimated in teacher training courses despite the fact that errorsconstitute evidence of the level of difficulty of an exercise oractivity and indicators of learning success or failure. Specific trainingactivities are described which help trainees identify and classify errors with greater linguistic sensitivity.

Barnes stresses the importance of language skills maintenance for modernforeign language teacher trainees taking a postgraduate certificate ineducation (PGCE). The programme is given by the University of Warwickand encompasses several aspects of subject knowledge. The author describesthe rationale behind the development of the programme as well as the contentand the tasks. The Language Centre provides the programme with audio andmultimedia material, satellite TV and printed materials. Trainees aregiven specific tasks to complete using the materials available, some of whichare open-ended. Language learning refreshment classes are combined withindependent language learning sessions. The author concludes bystressing the encouraging results of the programme, especially of the language refreshment classes.

Richard Cullen: The use of lesson transcripts for developing teachers'classroom language

Cullen uses lesson transcripts made from video recordings of classroomteaching to develop teachers' classroom language skills on in-servicecourses to deepen their understanding of teaching processes. Theemphasis is placed on questioning (to get students to think, to check understanding, to get them practice language forms etc.) since this still constitutes an essential aspect of effective teaching especially for non-native speaker teachers. The ultimate aim of Cullen is to raise the teachers' awarenessof the pedagogical role of different types of teacher questions and toimprove their proficiency in reformulating pedagogically useful questions.Teaching skills are improved together with language skills.

Together with Murray's chapter, this one can be considered as an exampleof action research. The author used an on-going research methodology,collecting data at various points to capture possible changes ofperceptions of both teachers and tutors. The data were obtained from two groups of primary and secondary school teachers of English from Korea attendingin-service teacher development programmes. The aim of the programme wasto upgrade the teachers' ELT methodology, to provide insights into Britishculture and to improve their languages skills. The analysis of data fromdiaries, interviews and questionnaires has proved that trainees andtutors keep changing their perceptions of the language improvement component of the course. The more confident the teachers become as far as their languageabilities are concerned, the better able they are to employ English inthe classroom and encourage their students to do likewise.

As pointed out in p. 23, teacher education, being a form of serviceindustry, in the business not of mass-producing machines (in this case,human) but of creating added value. The beneficiaries are of courseprospective teachers and in-service teachers, as well as learners,parents, employers and society at large. However, the nature of value added is very difficult to define since it is not always easy to define therelationship between teacher education and teacher performance.The same holds true for the present volume. Its value lies in the factthat we can select from the pages issues that are common in teacher education settings despite cultural differences. This is especially true for the second part of the book. The various forms of practice described in this part are contextually specific and not straight forwardly replicated inother places. However, they constitute an invaluable source of practiceand have wider implications for various educational settings.I

ABOUT THE REVIEWER:
Nadia Economou holds a Ph.D. in Educational Linguistics from the University of Lancaster, U.K. She has taught courses in General Linguistics and Discourse Analysis in private institutions in Greece. She is currently working as assistant researcher in the Division of Educational Technology at the Institute for Language and Speech Processing (ILSP).a